An impressive elevator pitch

One lesson I learnt early on with regard to client presentations was that you always get less time than planned to make the pitch. Sometimes a 30 minute session can get crunched to 10 or even 5 minutes, and the careful preparation is rendered frustratingly useless. To make matters worse, we fumble through the 5 minuted conversation, not knowing exactly what to say, and what to leave out. However it doesn’t have to be like that.

My recommendation to crystallize the main idea of a document or presentation automatically solves this problem. If you have put in the work to articulate the main idea, with a summary of the supporting points, you have a 30 second pitch that will express the key message. This 30 second elevator pitch can then be expanded suitably to 2 minutes, 5 minutes or 10 minutes by adding the next level of supporting detail as required.